Song of Blades & HeroesPosted by mappe Wed, February 24, 2010 22:35:06I had a day off work today, and my regular gaming buddy (and cousin, to boot) Fredrik came by for a day of gaming. I had worked out a small Song of Blades & Heroes campaign for us to tackle consisting of three linked scenarios.

Pyramid Campaign - Scenario 1.Two warring adventurer bands have acquired one half each of a magical talisman. The complete talisman is needed to unlock the secrets of an ancient pyramid, buried deep in the remote forests. Neither band is prepaired to share the certain riches to be found, thus they meet for a final show down. The winner walks away with both pieces of the talisman and can gain access to the pyramid when they reach it.The scenario rules were quite simple. The leader of each warband have one half of the talisman. To win, a warband has to posess both talisman pieces when exiting their entry point. The entry points are a "long" section on the centre of each player's table edge. Talisman pieces are dropped when the carrier is removed from play and any non-animal character can pick them up by spending one action when adjacent to it.Fredrik's warband consisted of (from left to right): Darkhölme (human archer), Ana-Marie Lebaue (human thief), Creed (human berserker; 3+, 3, fearless, savage), Catherine (human leader), Summer (human magic-user), Blink (elf archer), Tora (dwarf warrior). Click the image for a larger version.My warband was fairly similar (from left to right): Lasek (human witch hunter), Khwair (dwarf warrior), Husk (half-orc hero; +4, 3, hero), Hawkins (human leader), Tibor (human warrior), Kiruk (dwarf warrior), Llandau (elf rogue; 2+, 3, stealth).After setting up the table, we diced for initiative. I won, and advanced up the middle in a fairly fanned out formation. In retrospect I should've had Llandau (my elf rogue with sneak) on the right flank instead of the left, and tried to sneak up to the forests on my far right flank.

Fredrik's forces moved up to the centre field, leaving only the elf archer Blink in the back, at the edge of the woods on my far right flank.The next round, I made my first mistake. Lasek (my human witch hunter) advanced to the middle of the board and took a shot at Creed (Fredrik's human berserker). Lasek missed his shot, and all my other activations failed. Fredrik's Creed and Tora (dwarf warrior) closed on poor Lasek and disposed of him the next turn, while following with most of his other warriors. The grim reaper below indicates poor Llandau's position.I tried counter assaulting and flanking his magic-user Summer with an ambush attack from Llandau, but failed. Llandau fell and was killed the following turn by Creed.At this point, I had a feeling I would lose the game. So far, I had not managed to take any of my opponent characters out, while I had lost almost a third of my points values in the form of two characters.My first break came when Fredrik advanced with Tora and failed activating any other characters. I attacked her with Khwair and Husk, who managed to bring her down. Tibor moved in for the kill, abandoning the assault on Blink who had camped out in the woods stand but ran out of arrows.Fredrik tried to move around my left, attempting to get at my leader -
while I wheeled around to the right trying to do the same. I did a lame
attempt at attacking with Kiruk, but he was quickly slain. Fredrik then
advanced towards my hero Husk and disposed of him too. At this point, I
was about ready to throw in the towel.After this, things kind of went bananas. After a failed attempt where Fredrik assaulted Tibor (my human warrior), I managed to turn the tables. Tibor killed Darkhölme (who had been very passive the whole game).Hawkins and Khwair came to Tibor's assistance and together they brought down Creed. Fredrik countered by taking out Khwair who had been transfixed by Summer. Free to move, with no adjacent enemies, my two remaining warriors
attacked and took out Summer. This sent the three remaining characters
in Fredrik's warband fleeing.The remaining melee was a bit long winded. We traded blows back and forth, wittling away the numbers on each side. Finally, only my leader Hawkins and Fredrik's leader Catherine and her companion Blink were still on the battlefield. Things looked grim for Hawkins, but with determination and a hefty portion of luck he managed to turn the tables. From total despair a few turns earlier, he was the last man standing and could head home with the two talisman pieces!All my characters recovered fully from their injuries, except Kiruk who went on to the next battle with a temporary decrease to his Quality attribute.

I'll continue tomorrow with a (shorter!) write-up on the second scenario, where Hawkin's brave band is waylaid by a foul band of troglodytes.